There may be some poetic justice in the recent revelation that Hillary Clinton, who has made big noises about a “pay gap” between women and men, paid the women on her Senate staff just 72 percent of what she paid the men. The Obama White House staff likewise has a pay gap between women and men, as of course does the economy as a whole.

Governors make lots of decisions. They propose budgets. They hire Cabinet secretaries and other key officials. They appoint members to governing boards. They sign or veto bills. They offer or withhold clemency to criminals.

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He swirled the drink in its vessel, sniffed it cautiously, took a sip and closed his eyes. Silence reigned for many minutes. Finally, he opened his eyes. “The nose has great complexity, with hints of peppery spice, dried fruits and gingerbread. The palate is dominated by dense vanilla bouquets and well-structured tannin’s.”

Always the obsessively realistic child who colored cows brown and the sky blue, I was never all that into unicorns. They were not “for real,” so I did not give them much attention. When I went to the carnival, I wanted to win a real-life goldfish, not a stuffed unicorn that made no sense to my overly rational brain.

Life grants, mandates and surprises us all with expectations daily. Some we are innately okay with and there are others we learn to be okay with. There are others, still, that are so infuriating or frustrating that we’d … I’d … rather watch Bravo for 24 hours straight, “Clockwork Orange” style, than deal with them. I expect some of you to be offended by that statement.

At a recent garden club I attended, we got to talking about landscapers and the fact you have to be licensed to apply pesticides to someone else’s landscape. I was speaking from my experience back in the day when I used to do landscape work.

My oldest son is handsome, smart, and, in the words of my old boss Ann Richards, very nearly perfect. I love him boundlessly, so it hurts me to know that his homeland has been at war for every single day of his life except for a few months in 2001 when he couldn’t yet crawl. Now he’s shaving, and for the first time in his life he might get to witness a real discussion about going to war.

So NBC’s Brian Williams is off his anchor desk for six months — wanna bet it’ll be a LOT longer than that? — and has gone from being a respected anchor to a godsend to comedy writers, Internet ridicule and Jerry Seinfeld punch lines.

The firestorm of denunciation of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, for having said that he did not think Barack Obama loved America, is in one sense out of all proportion to that remark — especially at a time when there are much bigger issues, including wars raging, terrorist atrocities and a nuclear Iran on the horizon.

Half the states in the country currently provide help for their low-wage workers with a state Earned Income Tax Credit patterned after the federal EITC that former President Ronald Reagan called the best anti-poverty program Congress ever created.